


Finifugal

by Atlanova



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bruises, Can Be Read As Romantic, Emotional Eleven, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Impossible Girl, Musing, Revelations, Scars, Security, Slight anger, Snow, Trenzalore (Mentions)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22057729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanova/pseuds/Atlanova
Summary: “From the beginning, she was impossible.The impossible girl. We’re running togetherand she’s perfect. Perfect in every way for me.Clara. My Clara. Always brave,always exactly what I need her to be.Get used to not knowing. I thought I neverwould and I was wrong. I know whoClara Oswald is. I know how she cameto be in my life, and I know what shewill always mean.”- The DoctorShe Said, He Said: A Prequel- The Name of the Doctor
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Clara Oswin Oswald
Kudos: 15





	Finifugal

finifugal  
(adj.) hating endings; of  
someone who tries to  
prolong the final moments  
of a story, relationship, or some  
other journey 

“I'm sorry, Clara," he avows in a low, careful murmur, the words drifting out of his mouth and slowly spiralling in the snowflakes. He unclasps his hand from hers, the cold prickling the suddenly exposed skin. Looking down, he smiles, but there is no happiness within it that can be seen, nor felt inside of him. He tentatively brings his palm to her forehead, failing to understand why she doesn't move. The bruise that darkens one side of her face becomes even more prominent in the graceful moonbeam, and his lips sit in a tight line as he considers it. The large discolouring underneath her eye makes an anger that he often doesn't let himself show break through. He shakes his head. Why isn't she moving? Why isn't she flinching? She had been beaten less than a few hours ago, her eyes are closed, and she's surrounded by darkness: surely she should flinch, regardless of whether he is there with her to keep her safe. But perhaps, the Doctor considers - even though he isn't really _that_ type of clever - that that is just it. He is there, and it doesn't matter what happened to her; he is enough for her to feel shielded from harm. His brows furrowed, he traces his thumb over her temple, before running his hand gently through her hair, his fingers meeting the snowflakes that sit untouched. More snow falls around them, and the Doctor stares at it, almost in awe. Glassy eyes fix to the tiny things, so light and so innocent, dancing down to the ground, to their resting place. It saddens him a little that such beautiful dainty things could be permitted such a sudden end. He looks up, the corners of his mouth twitching a little. It's dark apart from the moonlight, the snowflakes falling from a void of space and nothing else. Falling from somewhere he's spent the most of his many generations protecting for the incredible cosmos that it is. The smile disappears. It shouldn't need saving. It should be a civil place - somewhere all the secrets of his aged mind could sit still for thousands of years. But only a matter of hours ago he and Clara had been in that void, taking up arms against whatever trouble he had landed them in this time. When they had entered, Clara had been ebullient about another adventure with her Doctor, but had come out of it far from untouched. "I'm sorry."

He feels her stir against him. "Doctor, please," she murmurs. "It's okay," she whispers, snuggling into the fleecy, almost eskimo-like coat that he had placed around her. _'I want to see the stars, Doctor,'_ she had said, and not - although only he knows it - for the first time. He had approached her where she had sat cowering in the TARDIS like a wounded animal. He'd slowly crouched before her, had tried to persuade her otherwise; that she needed to go the hospital, or home - anywhere other than with him. He still doesn't understand why she had refused over and over again: why she had wanted to stay with him and be reminded of what had happened. 

"How?" he asks, his throat starting to constrict. "It-it's _not_ okay, Clara."

She sighs deeply and although she doesn't open her eyes, she can still see the look of complete perplexity that had displayed itself in the painful innocence of his eyes when she had knocked the offers of going home back at him. "Just shut up," she whispers. Somewhere in her body, a tiny, tiny voice is telling her to smile, to laugh, because she often does when she tells him to shut up. But she'll push it away kicking and screaming if this night is any exception.

"Clara," he insists, and she feels the tension of his body increase. 

The Doctor may be mad and childish and whatever else, but his soul is kind and his heart cannot let go. She sighs in defeat, and opens her eyes. She has to blink back the tears as she does. Sudden gushes of emotion that seem to have come too quickly find her damaged heart. She shakes her head and lets her eyes find each snowflake of the hundreds that flicker around them. 

" _Clara_ ," he repeats, and something dark in his voice causes her to turn her head and look up at him. It's a tone - perhaps a type of anger - that she has rarely seen in her Doctor. Their eyes don't even lock; as soon as her gaze finds his face, his is already drawn to the scar and the bruises on her skin. His eyes are glassy and full of fresh, burning outrage. But there's something else - something else she has seen too many times - that rims his eyes as plain as day. "I'm sorry."

"Doctor," she starts, already feeling a sore lump rise in her throat. "If you - if you say that one more time, I-I-" she cannot continue. Her throat closes and a sweltering tear escapes from her eye. It's a sight that the Doctor cannot take anymore. He watches, helpless and, oh, so sorrowed, as the tear trickles over the bruise.

"I was supposed to protect you." The sentence had come out in nothing more than a whisper, in nothing other than an echo of his mind. A soft breeze finds the pair, blowing the floppy strands of his hair over his forehead, and sweeping strands of Clara's hair across her face. Quickly he reaches to smooth them back, to fold them behind her ear. His thumb grazes her cheek as he does, and she cannot bring herself to look at him any longer. The exhaustion winning over the stubbornness that is usually her strongest trait, she repositions herself against him before laying her head back on his shoulder. The right side of her face, the unscathed side, finds the warmth of him. But the sinistral side, the one battered senseless, is left to meet the cold air and the tiny ice crystals. Nothing more than it deserves. 

He holds her closer, adamant not to let the frosty air bite her, determined to make her feel safe. If he weren't condemning himself entirely he would smile - smile at Clara's choice of wanting to sit outside in the cold and snow rather than staying in the warmth. But this night hadn't been like any of the others - they couldn't just go back into the TARDIS ready for their next escapade. Not this time. Not yet, anyway. He looks down at her, where she's almost falling asleep, wrapped in warmth but covered in contusions and small gashes. Slackening his left arm from around her torso, he traces his fingertips across her cheek so lightly that it's scarcely felt upon Clara's scars or the Doctor's touch. "Why didn't you want to go home?" he murmurs into her hair. The wind speed begins to pick up around them, sending strands of her hair untamed and loose, and watering his eyes but he can't bring himself to turn away. "Why here? It's cold."

It's the slight break and scared innocence in his tone that makes Clara snap her eyes open. She looks up at him, but a small smile graces her lips. "You're confused."

Now, it's his turn to frown at her like she's gone completely insane. "Yes, I am. I’m dreadfully confused."

"Why?" she whispers.

The Doctor shifts uncomfortably and his gaze switches from Clara, to her wounds, and to the clusters of snowflakes around them. "Why didn't you want to go home?"

Her mouth sits in a line, and he cannot tell what she's feeling. He waits, and after what feels like minutes of half-watching, half-grimacing, and half-avoiding the array of emotions that pass over her face, she drags her gaze back to him and shrugs. "I like the snow."

He sighs and looks away from her. Why did she have to do that? Why did she have to make these kinds of conversations so hard? "Who doesn't?" he says, turning back to face her. There's wary look that creases her brows at the comment. For all the Doctor's great strengths, he's a terrible liar: her Doctor would have a smile on his face, or he would already be mid-way through telling her some comical story about an encounter with snow, or he would have stated that adults who don't like snow belong on some distant, abandoned planet engulfed with the Silence or Daleks or some such thing; but Clara can see the massive tell - no words have come from his mouth. Instead, all that's there is a look of guilt and dubiety. "But you got hurt."

For some reason that she is perhaps too scared to fathom, she feels frustration rise within her. "I know that, Doctor. I remember."

"So why did you refuse to go home? Why did you tell me you want to see the stars? Why did you tell me to bring you somewhere with snow? _Why_ , Clara?" 

She shrugs again and shivers. "Why should this time be any different? I know there are risks every time the TARDIS lands anywhere, but I still go."

" _Why_?" he asks again, frowning at her with such a deep curiosity that she has only seen a few other times before, like when he had asked her who she really was, or when he told her about the War Doctor, or when she had told him that she'd read his name in the book of the Time War. Each of those things masquerading such fundamental secrets. "I asked you once before if you felt safe - travelling, with me," he rambles quickly. "And you-''

"And I answered honestly! I felt safe then, I felt safe today, and I feel safe _now_!" she blurts out, almost shouting at him, and since it's just the two of them she may as well have directed the shouts at the vast valleys and mountains blanketed in flocculent snow, too.

"But -" his gaze rapidly flickers from her, to the ground, and then back to her, circling like that as the clogs tick in his mind. "But why?" he repeats, staring at her, wide-eyed.

"Doctor …" she starts, before feeling too flummoxed to continue. She'd known him for some time now, and her Mother had always told her that she was a good people-reader - compassionate, insightful, that sort of thing. Others may struggle indefinitely to figure out the Doctor, but she had always seen him. Had always felt drawn to him and him to her for reasons neither of them had ever been able to completely assimilate. There is some kind of force that they swear the universe had put there to make sure they stayed as companion and Doctor for as long as possible, for whatever reason. He is child-like, yes. He is very energetic and excitable, yes. His mind never switches off - he goes from one idea to the next. He is caring, and gentle but determined and is undeniably the most intelligent person she had ever met. He also dislikes uncertainty, not knowing things - she knows that it pulls at his mind until he's driven mad with it. The way he fires every question of theories he puts together at someone all at once as if he is overwhelmed by something in his life not being indubitable. But, given that this emotional dilemma is not one with the direct strength to destroy planets, Clara wonders why he even cares. Perhaps the answer, alike the wind whipping around the both of them, is staring her right in the face. If only she could wake up and see it for what it really is. “I _trust_ you, Doctor - with my life.”

At once, strangely, everything stills. The snow slows, and instead it just drifts, so peaceful it makes Clara smile a little. The wind is no longer a harsh noise in their ears, and is instead a gentle breeze that brushes the cold over their faces, but nothing more. She locks eyes with him, and he looks at her, determined with something. Oh, she had seen that look way too many times to count. But this time, unlike the other times he had seemed so accomplished and relieved whenever he figures something out, there are footmarks of sadness in his eyes. He reaches steadily to touch her face, and she doesn't flinch. She watches him carefully as his fingertips lightly trace down her face, dangerously close to the angry bruise. Not once does she think she sees him breathe. She swallows and closes her heavy eyelids as he ghosts his fingers down her face, slowly, past the rough scratches to her jaw. They linger there for a moment almost hesitantly, Clara realises. She opens her eyelids just a little to see the most conflicted look on the Doctor's face that she has ever seen. It pains her deeply and she almost takes his hand away from her face, only she senses that he needs this - needs to accept what happened to her. He swallows and his eyes are fixed on her, as his thumb trails carefully down to her neck. He had tried not to focus on it too much, but now, finds that he can do nothing but stare at it. The sharp, crimson line skims the length of her throat, the skin around it bruised and a little torn. It forms straight but the top part of the scar is deeper than the rest, and the Doctor takes an educated guess that that was where the creature had plunged the skin with its razor-sharp nails, before dragging them down. The Doctor repeats the actions it must have taken, only his are full of compassion and void of wanting to inflict any harm. The scar ends at her collarbone, and the skin there looks rough, and that, the Doctor knows, was when he had found Clara - had burst through the doors after hearing her cries for help and yelps of pain, to find the creature's nails scratching deep wounds into her flesh. He had yelled and zapped it with his sonic, before standing in shock, as he watched a traumatised Clara stumble towards him, her face harshly bloody and tear-stained. He had then rushed forwards and caught her feeble and shaking body, before scooping her up and getting her the hell out of there. "Oh, Clara," he whispers, his fingers finally leaving the scars and bruises.

"This wasn't your fault."

He makes a swift side-to-side movement with his head, his eyes becoming austere again and his frown reappearing. "No, Clara. I-"

" _Doctor_!" she cuts him off sternly. "Just listen to me!" The snow continues to fall thick and fast. "I've told you - I always know there are dangers. _Always_. But when has that ever stopped me?"

"I know things have happened in the past, Clara. But …" he looks back at the wounds and then back to her, "but nothing has ever left injuries like these. _Ever_."

She sighs and grabs his hand, making sure to hold his gaze. Something new passes over her countenance, something new in the Doctor's eyes. He thought he'd seen everything; the destruction of innocent and misunderstood creatures, the ruination of planets and galaxies shattering into just stars and darkness; bloodshed and tears that he had caused during the darkest phase of Time Lord history, and could not yet forgive his hearts for the pain he had conflicted; companions that went as quickly as they came, stamping memories into his mind and leaving before the ink had dried. But, not this. Not this emotion that is now overlying her face. This strange, unfamiliar thing that his venerable eyes have never seen before. Another mystery from his impossible girl. "Trenzalore," she whispers, not necessarily because she has the inability to speak loudly in the cold, but because it's a frangible word that they had recently argued to keep in their past. The Doctor can only look at her, that very same bewilderment creasing his brows but there's also confusion - what Clara wants to believe it is, rather than anger - tensing his jaw. "What happened in Trenzalore. What … what I learnt, Doctor. Something that made me doubt who I was, but it made sense. All those times you asked me that same question, it always scared me. But … Trenzalore. It's … it's-"

"Clara-''

"While I was falling, I didn't know who I was, or where I was," she enounces, staring through teary vision at the look of wondered perplexity in his eyes, but it's the assiduity ablaze there as he hangs on to every word - every syllable - she utters that makes her keep going. "But then, even before I reached the ground, I finally knew. I," she starts and draws a deep breath, squeezing his knuckles that at some point have turned pale, "am your saviour. Sacrificing myself was just me wanting you to … to get up off the ground and stop screaming!" she cries, almost breathless with the cold, and this - everything she is vouchsafing to him - seems to be sapping her energy more than being attacked by that thing with nails had. "But after Trenzalore, I learnt that it was much more than that."

"It's what you were always meant to do," he mumbles, taking his hand to the side of her face, like he had so many times before. Except, today, he has to be careful not to touch the bruises. 

"Because I was born to save you. I've died, and come alive, and died again, every time meeting you, and-"

"Saving me and dying again in the process.”

Clara smiles, although it isn't as wide as it usually is, her view of the Doctor's troubled face being disrupted by the snowflakes that are falling in rhythm around them. She looks down and sees that his fingers have tightly locked around hers, his knuckles still white. "Have you figured me out yet?"

The Doctor's head snaps towards her at this, the words forcing him to break out of his deep muse. He considers the almost mischievous but mostly curious grin on her face and the way she tilts her head ever so slightly. "What?"

"You once told me that I was the only mystery worth solving," she whispers, suddenly relieved at the way the corners of his mouth twitch upwards at the reminder. "And I know what a mystery does to you. Knocks around in there," she smiles, reaching up out of the warmth of her ever so slightly worn overcoat to tap the side of his head with her index finger, "until you can't take it anymore, it remains unsolved, so you fire questions and hurl accusations around like a madman until you know the answer." Her hand settles for the tweed material on his shoulder. "So?"

"Clara Oswald," he murmurs, deep eyes reaching far into her soul, stripping her bare of any ability to resist fondness. Truthfully, his intellect and passion is something that had always made her feel connected to him in such a way that she cannot put her finger on. Sometimes she thinks it's like shouting into the anonymity of a deep ravine and only hearing her own words bounce back - never wanting to explore inside because that tiny, minuscule fear of risking seeing everything that completely joins up all the tiny shards of the enigma that affixes them both is more scary than anything. It puts her competence to be a soldier with the bravery to march into any other battle to shame. "The moment I saw Oswin's grave, you were already a mystery - unlike anything else I'd ever encountered. And then new versions of you kept finding me, saving me. And yes, you're right. There is nothing I hate more than uncertainty. But maybe you were always meant to be a mystery - something even I couldn't figure out. The answer is, perhaps, in the oldest, most dust-covered book in the universe, but on the very last page. The only one that's torn out." 

At some point, the moonbeam had moved to them where they sit in the snow, almost putting both Doctor and companion in the spotlight of the universe. Rays of light contrast to the dark night sky around them, highlighting the light brown streaks in her hair and glistening something that mirrors wonder in her eyes. But he can only admire her this way for a matter of what feels like milliseconds; the most scintillating flare from the moon seems to have found her neck, her jaw, the left side of her face. Array with light blues and purples, and the scars turning a more intense shade of crimson.

He winces at the now more obvious sight, something Clara catches in a matter of seconds. "Doctor," she whispers, almost warningly, "don't go there again." Except, she can see it on his face: that look that's always there when he's about to say something - something he absolutely has to say and nothing can stop him. 

“You … being my impossible girl," he starts slowly, his voice a hushed monotone. "That doesn't matter when things like this happen. Just because you're supposed to save me, it doesn't mean I can't try to save you." As his gaze falls on Clara's, he's extremely tempted to force it away again; the look of almost irritability that flickers in her eyes very nearly sends him into a paroxysm of cowardly over-apologising. 

"Doctor, you _have_ saved me before. Don't try and tell me otherwise. When we went to the centre of the TARDIS, you pulled me back through before the Time zombies got to me. And Trenzalore?" she asks, and he closes his eyes. "Your time stream was collapsing in on you but you _stupidly_ refused to get out until you got me."

"No," he suddenly says, holding his hand up to her. Clara blinks in surprise. "You were under my protection today. You are _always_ under my protection. I need to keep you _safe_.”

" _Doctor_ ," she repeats sternly. "You rescued me from that … thing. Without you, I would have died … again."

He purses his lips as he studies her and that assuredness that can fluctuate stress of a situation, or if she's being particularly stubborn, but it's always there, anchored in perpetuity. It's one of the untold things he is fond of and admires so much about her. Chance would be a fine thing if she ever backs down but, for once, he doesn't want her to. He has watched in many a situation as she risked her life to save him, ever courageous and, perhaps, at times, more brave than he has ever remembered being before. Endangering her life to win a fight or a negotiation is brave, and he has always admired her for that. But walking into his time stream, knowing she would be painfully scattered across history, knowing she would die many times but doing it anyway to save him was foolhardy. Many of the things she has done just for him have been foolhardy - where the line between credulous recklessness and brave heroism was drawn. Anything she does that means there's a terribly high chance he could lose her - that he might have to bury her _again_ \- is too much for him to deal with.

"We've been saving each other this whole time," she reminds him in a whisper, and her lips press together in a smile. "It's okay if you can't always save me, Doctor," she tells him with a humble shrug. "But that's okay, right? 'Cause for now, we're still here." His wandering gaze magnetises to Clara's, a grin finding its way onto his face. He swallows it down a little, lets it settle into a comfortable smile as he traces her bruises once more. "Oh, don't worry about those."

"Why?" he asks softly, his brows furrowed at her.

"Because they'll be gone the next time you see me. I won't bother to remember them," she says, slight seriousness beginning to appear in her eyes, "and neither will you."

"Won't I?" he mutters, raising an eyebrow.

Clara smiles, extends her arm, and cups her hand in the air. The Doctor watches her, bewildered once again. The snowflakes, one by one, appear on her palm, her smile growing wider with each one. His hand drops from her face, and leisurely his arm falls around her shoulders. Shuffling against a rock, he continues to marvel at her. Beaten and cut only hours ago, but still wants to sit in the snow just for pleasure, still wants to smile through the pain of the injuries, still wants to resume travelling with him given what happened. But, she had said what he has always known deep down; she knows without fail that there are dangers. Still feels safe when anything could happen, even though she had come close to dying a few times whilst with him, now. She continues to catch the falling snow, continues to gaze happily at it. Clara has always had the upper hand when it comes to mortality; she doesn't remember her past selves and she doesn't remember what dying felt like. But the Doctor had watched life leave her, not once, but twice. Stayed with her the second time round as she became weaker and weaker, his hand still clasped in hers, and a delicate little silver key held in her cold fingers. He doesn't like endings, but something about the last page of that chapter had made him bide in Victorian London, irregardless of how painful leaving the words behind had been.

"No," she finally answers, turning her head quickly to face him. "No, you won't."

And he knows for a fact that if that smile were to leave him again, he would slip back into the grief-fuelled depression. She had been the one to pull him out from the depths of it; she can't be the one to propel him back in it. He doesn't quite know what he would do without her, but is agonisingly aware that it will have to end at some point. Nevertheless, as he sits here in snowfall watching his bruised companion smile at something as common as the white flakes, he can almost reach out and grasp the reality that he will _always_ be able to save her. Except, he can’t. He knows he can’t. If travelling with Clara has taught him anything, it’s that he can’t win every battle even if it’s worth sending a thousand armies to fight it. Secretly, he hopes that he will regenerate _first_ so that he won’t have to watch her die once more, even if it means that Clara will see his personality change and his face become unrecognisable in a heart-rending flash. For all intents purposes, she’d watch him turn into a different person entirely. He wants to crush the anticipation down into the snow with a clenched fist until it’s six feet under because of how uncaring it makes him seem, but if their story is going to cease, he can only hope for an ending that would cause the least pain for both of them. 

"You’re always telling me how brave I am,” she begins, compassion over watching his facial expressions change in the last few moments urging her to say something, “and one day - _one day_ , Doctor - maybe you won’t be able to save me. But that’s okay, because if that happens, I’ll know you tried, and I _will_ be brave. So, head up, chin boy.” She smiles fondly. “And remember this.”

“I won’t ever forget,” comes a hushed whisper from the misty-eyed Time Lord, face full of wonder or, perhaps, pride.

“Good. Now, less of the sentimentality. We’ve still got places to see, planets to save. So, where will we go next?” she asks, a slightly roguish grin appearing on her face.

He leans forward, his arm still draped around her shoulders, snowflakes still dusting their clothes and drifting peacefully around them. "Where do you want to go, Clara Oswald?"

"Take me anywhere, Doctor," she tells him quietly, and he smiles, placing a quick, fond kiss to her forehead. She rests back against him and gazes up at the dark sky scattered with fresh snow and longevous flaring stars. "I'll go anywhere."

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This was my first time writing for both Eleven and Clara, and it was interesting and really fun - especially writing Eleven because of exploring the darker side to him that he hides under all that energy and childishness :) 
> 
> If there’s any criticism, keep it kind and constructive please. Lastly, I hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
